I place a hand on her lower back and push her towards the hotel’s entrance. The valet behind us says something, but I don’t hear it, and I have no intention of turning to find out what it was.
“That was rude,” Bella says without looking at me. Her head is held high, eyes straight ahead. After seeing her lying on a concrete floor, I almost forgot this environment is where she’s most comfortable. Bella grew up wealthy. She knows how to interact with these people. How to blend in.
“Leading that poor man on was rude.”
“Who says I was leading him on?” she asks, wrapping her arm through mine as though we’ve done it a thousand times before.
My mouth twitches into a smirk, and I shake my head. “The day a guy like that gets a woman like you, I’ll walk into the police station and confess every crime I’ve ever committed.”
“Would that confession take a while?” she asks.
The woman behind the front desk—a blonde with too much blush—is smiling at us as we approach, and I smile back. “They’d probably break it down in three or four separate interviews.”
Bella nods and then smiles beside me while we check into the hotel. The room is under one of the many aliases connected with my father, Charlie Williams, and the woman doesn’t so much as blink as she checks my ID, accepts my cash, and hands us our room cards.
When we’re in the elevator, Bella slides her arm out of mine and takes a step away. “A woman like me?”
It takes me a second to realize she’s talking about what I said before. About the guy at the valet desk. “Don’t make me tell you you’re beautiful. You already know it.”
She blushes but doesn’t argue.
The room is a suite. There’s a living room with a plush cream-colored sofa, a flat-screen television, and a writing desk. French doors open into a bedroom with a queen-sized bed and a master bathroom just off that. There’s a standing shower and a jacuzzi tub.
“This is better than the cell,” Bella says, leaning against the doorway leading into the bedroom, arms crossed over her chest. “Now, why are we here?”
I thumb through the room service menu. “I already told you. The men your father is working for might be coming for you, and—”
“My father doesn’t work for anyone,” she says. “He’s a good man.”
“Good men find themselves in big trouble more often than you’d think,” I say, dropping the menu onto the coffee table and looking at her.
Really looking at her.
When I was following her, she was a beautiful stranger. In the basement of my father’s hideout, she was a beautiful prisoner. But now, sitting in a luxurious hotel room with a bed no more than fifteen feet away, she’s just beautiful. And it’s distracting.
Her dress is tight over her flat stomach and the flare of her hips. It’s obvious she spends time taking care of herself and maintaining her body, but a lot of it’s natural. No amount of cardio or weight lifting would help her legs or breasts fill out her silhouette so well.
“So, this organization,” she says, standing tall and walking to the minibar in the corner. “What do they want with me?”
“The same thing we want with you,” I say. “Or nothing. I brought you here as a precaution.”
She turns around, her expression solemn, all signs of snark and sarcasm gone. “And what do you want with me?”
The question feels like a trap. I want so many things with her. I want to do so many things to her. And even though I know she doesn’t mean it that way, I stand to attention as the words pass her lips. “My father wants to use you to get to your father.”
“No,” Bella shakes her head, her lips parted in an ‘O’. “What do you want with me?”
Does she mean that question the way I want her to mean it? I’m not sure, so I don’t say anything. That seems like the safest response.
She walks towards me, one foot in front of the other like she’s walking on a tightrope. Her hips sway easily, like she isn’t even trying. And I don’t think she is. She can’t help but be alluring. Like a siren luring men from their boats to crash upon the rocks and die in the salty ocean.
“Your father wants me for his own reasons, but why do I feel like your reasons may not be your father’s?” she asks, head tilting to the side. Her dark hair falls over her forehead, obscuring her eyes for a second until she brushes it back.
“I have no reason. Only my father’s matters.”
She frowns. “You would have slit my throat because your father asked you to.”
“Is that a question?” I ask.
“No.” She studies me, her eyes searching me from top to bottom like she’s looking for a hidden manual somewhere. A book of instructions to better understand me. “I’m just trying to figure out why you would kill a person who has done nothing to you. I’m trying to figure out what kind of man you are that you can’t think for yourself and would allow someone else to force you to do their dirty work.”
Before I can think better of it, I’m on my feet and stalking towards her. Bella’s eyes widen, but she doesn’t retreat. She stands her ground. “Do not mistake me for a mindless soldier,” I growl. “There’s a difference between obedience and loyalty. I’m loyal to my father because he has been loyal to me. I trust his decisions, and if he had told me to kill you, I would have.”
Bella casts her blue eyes towards the floor. “Did you want to?”
“Want to what?” I step away from her.
“Did you want to kill me?”
The question feels like a dousing of cold water. I remember the knife in my hand, clutched between my fingers the way it had been so many times before.
